Russian President Vladimir Putin and his US counterpart Donald Trump have met on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Hamburg

WASHINGTON, July 10. /TASS/. The meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and his US counterpart Donald Trump was very important but it looks even more interesting in light of the statements that Trump had made during his visit to Poland, American political scientist and philosopher Paul Grenier told TASS.

When commenting on the meeting’s outcome, he said that "under the circumstances, the fact of the meeting taking place at all, and clearly in a way that established a sense of comfort is a very significant achievement." "This seems incredibly modest, but it is a step in the right direction," the expert added.

As far as Trump’s Warsaw speech is concerned, Grenier said that "US commentators were almost uniformly dismayed by his framing of politics in what was generally termed ‘Huntingtonian’ terms" (referring to US political scientist Samuel Huntington’s work The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order clarifying the theory of the multipolar world order that came to be after the Cold War - TASS).

"If the White House national security team actually believes what it said about there being distinct civilizations in the world, this could have enormous long-term implications for US policy, going well beyond in significance what happened during the Trump-Putin meeting," Grenier stressed.

However, in his words, "this does not, in itself, signal US readiness to accommodate to a multi-polar world." "The US, whether under Trump or his successors, may very well still seek to assert its leadership," the expert said. "But such a recognition - if sincere - would nonetheless open up the possibility of having a more rational conversation about the geo-politics of such a more complex and varied world; more complex, that is, than the one currently imagined by our disciples of universalism a la George W. Bush and Barack Obama," Grenier pointed out.

On July 6, while on a visit to the Poland’s capital of Warsaw, US President Donald Trump delivered a speech in defense of Western civilization, according to the White House. However, the speech was criticized by Trump’s opponents. In particular, Molly K. McKew, an expert on information warfare, wrote on Politico that "the themes of these speeches - speaking not of values but ‘civilization,’ not of alliances but ‘sovereignty,’ not of minority rights but the defense of the rights of the majority based on concepts of ‘traditional values’ - were all central tenets of Trump’s speech in Warsaw, which was littered with illiberal buzzwords meant to catch the ear of those like-minded while simultaneously placating potential critics." "Trump championed rhetoric and ideas that Putin had carefully crafted - ideas that some of Trump’s own advisers embrace," she added.